


Burn My Past to the Ground (The Epistolary Remix)

by igrockspock



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Background Logan/Veronica, Family, Found Family, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7423498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The person Veronica had called Mom was gone, just as surely as if she'd died, but there was no tombstone to visit and no one to mourn her loss.  The day before she leaves for Stanford, Veronica finds a way to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn My Past to the Ground (The Epistolary Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/gifts).
  * Inspired by [And Your Mother Too (Four Funerals And A Wedding)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8739) by [amathela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amathela/pseuds/amathela). 



The crumpled sheet of notebook paper in Veronica’s hand says, _Dear Mom, I’ve thought a lot about mothers in Neptune. I'm sure there are good ones out there; statistics, if not anecdotal evidence, suggest there have to be. But the ones I've seen? Don't quite measure up to the promises they tell you when you're a kid. Guess the odds never were on our side._

When Veronica was six, she begged both her parents to stop smoking. Even then, she was no fool; she’d seen pictures of black lungs, and she knew the warning on the box was ominous, even if she didn’t know exactly what it said. And one day on the playground, Lilly Kane had said that if your parents smoked, they’d die.

Her father quit cold turkey. Her mother promised to stop, made a show of chewing the gum and wearing the patches, and started smoking in the corner behind the house where she thought Veronica couldn’t see.

Veronica thought of that years later, when she found a bottle of vodka under the bathroom sink and the Serenity Prayer taped to the mirror. Maybe she should’ve thought harder before she gave up all her college money for her mom’s rehab -- but even if she’d known what would happen, she still would’ve had to try. 

_I know Dad went looking for you after the second time you split. I don’t think he ever found you. Maybe it’s better for everyone that he didn’t. I did manage to track you down once. In New Mexico. I didn’t run up to you to tell you that I forgave you, or that I didn’t. I just left. You taught me well._

Two weeks after Veronica came home from that little trip, Dick hired her to make sure his mom came to Beaver’s funeral. Veronica wasn’t sure why she had agreed. It wasn’t for the money; Dick gave her $54.73 and a coupon for a large pepperoni pizza at Pizza the Hutt. No doubt, in his mind, it was a princely sum for a woman of Veronica’s standing, but it didn’t quite match her hourly rate.

She certainly didn’t owe anything to the boy who’d raped her, blown up a bus full of kids, and left Mac naked and crying on the floor, and she felt a rush of savage pleasure in the idea that she could deny him even the semblance of his mother’s grief. 

But Dick couldn’t disguise the pain in his voice when he said, “They won’t let me move the body unless one of my parents signs for it. Dad’s not coming back, and Mom’s not answering the phone.”

It wasn’t like Dick really deserved her help, but she’d written down his mother’s home address anyway. 

“I’ll find her, I promise,” she’d said, and squeezed Dick’s hand.

Hell, maybe she just wanted to bring _somebody’s_ mom home.

_I used to think I didn’t have the right to be mad at you. Here I am, all ten fingers and toes, a capturer of murderers and serial rapists, the newest member of Stanford’s class of 2008. Would I have done any of that if you hadn’t taught me how to rely on myself? I used to think you made me who I am, even if you didn’t go about it the traditional way. The thing is, a lot of people get strong without being abandoned by their parents in their hour of need. I would’ve liked to be one of them._

Of course, it could’ve been worse. She’d take her mother over Don Lamb’s father any day.

Tracking down a bail jumper in Vegas wasn’t how she’d expected to New Year’s Eve her freshman year, but alas, not everyone gets to spend their holidays at the club. Especially not if they have student loans. And her choice of company? Not ideal, but if Don Lamb was willing to pay twice her rate plus expenses -- well, beggars can’t be choosers.

The target’s name was Carlos Bernard. She’d never expected it to be an alias for Donald Lamb, Senior. She certainly hadn’t known about the murder charges. When she realized Sheriff Lamb was using her to help his father escape, she threw up in her mouth a little, then in a nearby toilet bowl for real. 

The police car was pulling into the hotel parking lot when she’d finished emptying her stomach. That was when she realized the Sheriff had turned his father in.

He watched as the handcuffs pinned his father’s wrists, his jaw clenched so tight Veronica could swear she heard his teeth click. Together, they followed the police out into the too-bright parking lot, watched as the police pushed him down into the car.

The door was almost closed when Sheriff Lamb said, “I did it for my mom.”

He pushed a check into Veronica’s hand without meeting her eyes. She made sure to cash it on her way out of town, and she flew home with crisp hundred dollar bills in her bra.

She wanted the money. She _needed_ the money. She donated it to a battered women’s shelter and wrote _In memory of Josephine Lamb_ on the outside of the envelope. 

She didn’t see Sheriff Lamb for weeks after that -- an oddity, given the way she lived her life -- and she only ran into him at a bar she was technically too young to enter. The newspaper was open in front of him. _Donald Lamb, Sr. receives twenty-five to life in wife’s murder_ , it said.

She slid down onto the seat next to him and asked, “Does it make you feel better?” 

He looked her up and down once, registered the beer in her hand, and said, “Yeah.”

Veronica nodded. “I would’ve done the same.”

But then, he’d already known that; it was why he’d invited her along. 

Lamb’s smile looked cracked. “It would’ve been the other way around for you, right?” he said. “Give up your mom, avenge your dad.”

“Yeah,” Veronica said. For once, she couldn’t begrudge the man a hit below the belt. “For the record, I still hate you.”

Lamb lifted his glass. “Same.”

They finished their drinks in silence.

That night, she picked up a burner phone and dialed the last number she had for her mom. The voicemail greeting sounded old and frail, and Veronica hung up without leaving a message. 

The truth was, she envied Sheriff Lamb one thing: he got to mourn his mother. The woman who’d raised Veronica was gone, just as surely as if she’d died, but there was no tombstone to visit and no one to grieve with her.

_Anyone who says funerals are for the dead is either lying or seriously misguided. We create them for ourselves. It's our way of dealing with the grief. When the funeral is over, the mourning has passed, and we can move on. But how do you mourn the living? I never got to bury you, Mom. Today I’m going to try._

She’d gotten the idea from Logan. One year after Lynn Echolls’ death, he’d put on the same black suit he’d worn to her funeral. They’d walked in silence to her grave. The tombstone was just a little too large, a little too ornate -- Aaron’s doing. Whether to compensate for the empty coffin or the empty marriage, Veronica couldn’t say.

“Beloved wife and mother,” Logan read, staring at the inscription. His lips twisted. “Well, at least one of those is true.”

Then, in a voice almost too low to hear, he asked, “Do you think this is stupid?”

Veronica shook her head. “No.”

He lapsed into silence again. She didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Funerals had a script; this didn’t. She’d put flowers in back of the car, just in case, but Logan hadn’t wanted to leave anything.

Finally he turned back to look at her. “I just… Never got to say goodbye to her, you know?”

Veronica reached out to squeeze his hand. She’d thought he might cry, fall down on the ground even, crumble under the weight of so much pent-up grief. But he didn’t break.

Afterward, when they walked back to the car, she’d thought he looked lighter -- not in the theatrical way he pretended to be happy sometimes, whistling and talking too loudly and drinking too much, but quietly, with a smile that reached his eyes for once.

And now here she is, three years later, standing in her own patch of woods with a crumpled letter to her mother in one hand and a gold-lettered wedding invitation in the other. Her mom’s getting married in Vegas today. There’d been a note inside the envelope. It said _His name is John. I think you’d really like him. P.S. I’ve been sober two months and eight days._ She was about to put her RSVP card in the mail when she’d gotten a google alert: her mother had been arrested for drunk driving at 2:30 a.m. 

She looks back at Wallace and Mac.

“Is this stupid?” she asks. Her voice is shaking a little.

“Hell no,” Wallace says. He puts a lighter in her hand. She hadn’t seen it before; it’s silver, and the inscription on the side says _new beginnings._

“We got it for you. You know, like a tombstone, but not. More like, marking your new life instead of your old one,” Mac says. 

Veronica’s eyes are getting dangerously watery. Just before she loses it, Mac sneezes three times and they all laugh instead.

“I know, I know, get on with it so we can get you out of the woods,” Veronica says. Her voice is all thick, but she’s smiling.

The invitation burns slowly, but the letter goes up faster than she’d expected, the flame scattering bits of charred paper across the grass. She’d thought she might cry, and she does, but she’s laughing too -- wiping away tears and giggling as they stomp out the embers of her past together.

Arm in arm, they walk back to the car. Veronica even lets Wallace drive for once.

“Amy’s Ice Cream?” he asks.

“Hell yes,” Veronica and Mac say together.

They order blue raspberry slushies, the kind that will stain their teeth for the rest of the day, and carry them to the beach.

Wallace leads the toast. Raising his styrofoam cup in the air, he says, “So it’s been a big summer for all of us, and I want to take this moment to congratulate everyone on their new beginnings.”

“Well said, future teacher. Very inspirational,” Veronica says, hoisting her cup. She turns to Mac. “And to my new lesbian friend, congratulations on coming out of the closet. May your hookups with ladies be infinitely more satisfying than sex with men.”

Mac blushes, but she lifts her cup too. “And may your new life at Stanford be free from alcoholic mothers, charming men with troubled pasts, serial rapists, murderers, TA’s who envy your criminal investigation skills, corrupt law enforcement officials...Am I missing anything?”

“Be happy, Veronica,” Wallace says. “You deserve it.”

They sit on the beach, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, till the sun goes down. 

Family can be a tricky thing, Veronica thinks. You don’t get to choose the one you’re born with, but sometimes you can make your own.


End file.
